People have been using computers to work with their documents for years. In known systems, finding documents often means an expedition through a maze of directories and folders, and even simple jobs require learning a mysterious language of commands and data objects.
In known two-dimensional user interfaces, folders or directories are used to organize files or documents into groups and hierarchies. The traditional way of dealing with grouping documents is to use containers, directories or folders. A directory or a folder is a container in which you put other objects.
A problem with the known two-dimensional user interfaces is that documents in containers or directories are hidden from the user. The user is therefore unable to easily browse through the documents in the system. The user typically cannot see the documents inside a container without opening up the container.
For these reasons and others, a new system of document representation is required, which allows users to easily manipulate documents in an environment like the real world of the desktop, where documents are not hidden inside containers. The new system should enable the user to organize documents in a way that is intuitively appealing, and is not based on artificial constructs imposed by the nature of computer storage of documents or two dimensional user interface displays.